Needs debunking: Forensically disproves NASA photos

ChekcOrlD23

New Member
I was browsing on reddit, and I found this comment by a certain flat earther on ''r/globeskepticism''
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/globeskepticism/comments/n9r7x6/comment/gxr0o16/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3


Allegedly, he analysed this photo of astronaut Bruce McCandless and he ran it through a program called ''Forensically'' that can basically detect whether the photo has been manipulated in some areas.

Apparently, he ran it through ''Noise analysis'' and this is what he got

and he also ran it through ''Error level analysis''



He analysed other photos as well, but I figured that the post will be too long, notable one being that one on the Hubble in space. No elaboration is given on why these are bad results, nonetheless he concludes ''Result. Both are trash '', but I assume my ignorance is because I don't understand how the program works. Can anyone debunk this?
 
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I'd be surprised if this is much more than "I looked at compressed images and found artifacts".

If you could find the original, uncompressed, images and ran them through these processes you would probably get different results.

Or you could just analyse any jpeg off the internet and conclude that every photo ever taken is fake. Or accept that compression introduces artifacts and probably shouldn't be used to determine the validity of a compressed image.
 
OK, so I decided to do some "forensic" analysis of birds cos I've long suspected they don't actually exist.

So I just took a random photo of birds from the internet and have ran them through forensically and the results will amaze you all.

Photo analysed from -> https://posterstore.eu/posters-prints/nature-botanical/landscapes/sunrise-sky-birds-poster/

Error analysis...



Noise analysis...



There are NO photos of birds.

Conclusion, birds are fake :)

Note: This was the first photo I tried. I haven't gone through hundreds to find one that gave me the results I wanted. Also, I didn't touch any of forensically's settings, I left them as they defaulted to.
 
I'd be surprised if this is much more than "I looked at compressed images and found artifacts".

If you could find the original, uncompressed, images and ran them through these processes you would probably get different results.

Or you could just analyse any jpeg off the internet and conclude that every photo ever taken is fake. Or accept that compression introduces artifacts and probably shouldn't be used to determine the validity of a compressed image.
He analysed this photo as well

And he apparently found no artifacts.
 
OK, so I decided to do some "forensic" analysis of birds cos I've long suspected they don't actually exist.

So I just took a random photo of birds from the internet and have ran them through forensically and the results will amaze you all.

Photo analysed from -> https://posterstore.eu/posters-prints/nature-botanical/landscapes/sunrise-sky-birds-poster/

Error analysis...



Noise analysis...



There are NO photos of birds.

Conclusion, birds are fake :)

Note: This was the first photo I tried. I haven't gone through hundreds to find one that gave me the results I wanted. Also, I didn't touch any of forensically's settings, I left them as they defaulted to.
Thanks, this is great
 
According to the tutorial video for Forensically created by the tool's programmer, the Error Level Analysis can often show artifacts that misleadingly seem important yet are not indications of image manipulation, since various areas of an image will receive different types of JPG compression artifacting due to the very nature of how JPG compression works. In the help page for the tool it says about this: "The results of this tool can be misleading, watch the video and read the tutoria for details". So seeing an area of an image lit up with multicolored JPG artifacting in that tool is not necessarily an indication of image manipulation, its instead an indication that the lit up area of the image has content that the JPG compression algorithm treated differently than the surrounding area.

Interestingly, of course the lone well-lit object (an astronaut) in the middle of a vast nearly empty pitch black field of space will be artifacted differently under the normal rules of JPG compression.

In the video tutorial. the creator of the tool makes it clear that Error Level Analysis may help reveal interesting areas worthy of further analysis in cases where there are multiple areas of the same image that contain roughly the same types of imagery and shading and lighting yet Error Level Analysis makes one of them stand out with different artifacting than the others.
 
Is that source image a still, or a frame from a video? Video compression noise has whole other dimensions that can interfere with any attempts at analysis
 
And he apparently found no artifacts.

Just zooming in on the image shows artifacts...



(image zoomed in using mspaint, screenshotted, pasted and saved as png).

The moon's not very round and what's the haze around it?

You can use the sliders in forensically to find (or hide) whatever you want. Try it yourself.
 
Just zooming in on the image shows artifacts...



(image zoomed in using mspaint, screenshotted, pasted and saved as png).

The moon's not very round and what's the haze around it?

You can use the sliders in forensically to find (or hide) whatever you want. Try it yourself.

Worse than that - it's got jaggies at 2 different scales. So I would bet that it's been rescaled more than once.
 
Just zooming in on the image shows artifacts...



(image zoomed in using mspaint, screenshotted, pasted and saved as png).

The moon's not very round and what's the haze around it?

You can use the sliders in forensically to find (or hide) whatever you want. Try it yourself.
I would suggest that those are not "artifacts" as they are commonly understood but the individual pixels of which the image is composed. The jpeg format merges or smooths individual colour tones in each pixel to create a "lifelike" full sized image. Its how jpeg format works. Artifacts as I think are being discussed here are much more obvious and generally surround areas of high contrast or colour variation. It will also be dependent on which compression setting the user employs - the smaller the file size, the harsher the compression and the more pixellated the resulting image.

You can play about with the compression formats of a jpeg file in any image editor. I use an old abandonware version of Paint Shop Pro 7 and this is the jpeg compression screen in that software.
 

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Considering that we are already taking about this comment from u/dcforce, who seems to regularly spam links in hopes of converting people to his flat earther cult, I was wondering about this video which he linked
Source: https://youtu.be/1urbQvMdEyY
which claims that Himawari satellite photos are just ''composites.''
Apparently they already have simulated weather for every year until 2100 Satellite Himawari Debunk - Paul on the Plane - YouTube - Brave 18.1.2022. 14_16_47.png

afterwards he takes this photo of the Earth

Satellite Himawari Debunk - Paul on the Plane - YouTube - Brave 18.1.2022. 14_17_30.png
and compares it to some weather prediction Satellite Himawari Debunk - Paul on the Plane - YouTube - Brave 18.1.2022. 14_19_11.png

Afterwards he claims something utterly bizarre and laughable ''If it was dark on the other side of the day, how did they know where to put the clouds''
 

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I would suggest that those are not "artifacts" as they are commonly understood but the individual pixels of which the image is composed. The jpeg format merges or smooths individual colour tones in each pixel to create a "lifelike" full sized image. Its how jpeg format works. Artifacts as I think are being discussed here are much more obvious and generally surround areas of high contrast or colour variation. It will also be dependent on which compression setting the user employs - the smaller the file size, the harsher the compression and the more pixellated the resulting image.

You can play about with the compression formats of a jpeg file in any image editor. I use an old abandonware version of Paint Shop Pro 7 and this is the jpeg compression screen in that software.

Yeah, I probably got a bit fast and loose with the word artifacts. The "artifacts" I was referring to there is more the stepping on the curves of the moon and depending on what you are viewing on you might not see the haze around the moon I mention which appear to have come from single pixels that exist in the higher resolution image (zoom in on the moon in that one and you can see them).

But ultimately I think it's safe to say that forensically's Noise Analysis and Error Level Anaysis is not intended to verify the validity of the image using the methods demonstrated here. All that Noise and Error Level Analysis are picking up in these examples is noise (probably a better word than artifacts) caused by image compression.
 
Apparently they already have simulated weather for every year until 2100
... and that's where volcano eruptions come in, see https://www.metabunk.org/threads/how-to-prove-satellite-images-are-real-ground-truth.8781/ , because they're unpredictable years in advance.


Himawari satellite photos are just ''composites.''
They are composites because the satellite does not have a 121 Megapixel camera. See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/full-disk-hd-images-of-the-earth-from-satellites.8676/post-230086 for details.
 
Apparently they already have simulated weather for every year until 2100

Scientists do tend to science.

I don't want to watch the video but the time scales of the comparison are important. Weather predictions get worse over time. So if you compared yesterday's prediction with today's weather you'd expect a pretty good match. But if you compared last year's prediction with today's weather you'd expect a worse match.

But you could still get a good match even if they are far apart. That's where how many did they compare becomes important. Did they have to look through hundreds to find one that matched OK? Does every single one they checked match (doubtful or they woulda said so). Who knows. Of course they don't tell you.

As with so much of this stuff, what they don't tell you is probably more important than what they do. Decent sources aren't scared to tell you everything and probably want to explain it so that you yourself understand it and are able to do it too. All of this guff is just tell you enough. Like the first post that shows one image and we're supposed to be "yeah, you can tell real images from fakes, I'll trust you" instead of actually explaining anything about the process.
 
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